The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Sunday issued two summons to Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal concerning two money laundering cases. One summon is for questioning in the Delhi Excice Police scam case, while the other one is a new case, linked to alleged irregularities in the Delhi Jal Board.
ED has asked Arvind Kejriwal to appear before it at its Delhi office on Monday, March 18, to record his statement in the Jal Board case. This is the second case registered under the anti-money laundering law in which the ED has summoned Arvind Kejriwal.
The Delhi CM received the ninth summons in the Delhi excise policy scam case asking him to appear before ED on 21st March. He has been asked to arrive at the central agency’s office in central Delhi. The ninth summons from the ED was sent one day after the additional chief metropolitan magistrate of Rouse Avenue Court gave the Aam Aadmi Party chief bail sparing him from being arrested for ignoring a summons that the investigating agency had sent him over money laundering related to the liquor policy.
The purpose of the ninth summons is to record his statement under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA). The Delhi Chief Minister was issued a new summons after he disregarded the eighth one on 4th March.
He has dismissed eight prior ED summonses that were sent out on 4th March, 26th February, 19th February, 2nd February, 18 January, 3rd January, 22nd December and 2nd November citing them as “illegal and politically motivated.” The AAP called the eighth ED summons “illegal” in a statement, claiming that the probe agency had already addressed the court about the subject, therefore the ED should cease issuing summonses and await the court’s ruling.
Arvind Kejriwal repeatedly refuses to appear before ED
The Chief Minister has consistently declared these summons as unlawful and declined to appear in response. Last month, his party sources claimed, “The matter is in the court and the next hearing is on March 16. Instead of sending summons daily, the ED should wait for the court’s decision. We will not leave the INDIA alliance. Modi government should not create pressure like this,” when he refused to adhere to the summons.
“All five notices sent to me (by the ED) are illegal and invalid in the eyes of the law. Whenever such general, non-specific notices were sent by the ED in the past, they were quashed and declared invalid by courts. These notices are being sent as part of a political conspiracy,” he alleged when he skipped another ED summons.
The Aam Aadmi Party’s national convenor reportedly departed for a 10-day ‘Vipassana’ meditation camp in Punjab along with the state’s chief minister Bhagwant Mann in December of last year when the ED summoned him.”Lawyers are examining the ED’s notice and such steps will be taken that are legally correct. Everyone knows the Chief Minister is leaving for ‘Vipassana’ on December 19. He regularly goes for this meditation course. It’s a pre-scheduled and pre-announced plan,” stated AAP Rajya Sabha MP Raghav Chadha.
Arvind Kejriwal skipped the first summons in November and claimed that he had a hectic campaign schedule. He added that he couldn’t attend the summons since he was a star campaigner and state elections were approaching. He asked the agency to revoke the summons adding that it was “motivated and issued for extraneous considerations.”
Notably, the chief minister has offered different excuses regarding his unavailability to appear before the ED in relation to the Delhi liquor policy due to which prominent party leaders including former deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia and Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Singh are behind bars.
The Delhi Jal Board case
ED has registered a money laundering case concerning alleged irregularities in the tendering process of the Delhi Jal Board. ED is investigating two separate matters of irregularities in the tendering process of the DJB, a criminal case originating from an FIR of the CBI and the Anti-Corruption Branch (ACB) of the Delhi government. It is alleged that bribes paid by contractors to get tenders from the Jal Board were passed on to the Aam Aadmi Party.
As per the CBI FIR, Jal Board officials gave “undue advantage” to a firm while awarding it the tender for the supply, installation, testing and commissioning of electromagnetic flow meters. Allegedly, the firm NKG Infrastructure Ltd was awarded the ₹38 crore tender illegally as it did not meet the technical eligibility criteria and obtained the bid by submitting forged documents. It was further alleged that DJB funds were transferred to several shell entities and “layered through a complex web of transactions”.
As per ED, DJB contractor Anil Kumar Aggarwal had paid a bribe of ₹2.5 crore to retired chief Engineer Jagdish Kumar Arora. Both of them were arrested by the agency on 1st February.
Last month, ED said that bribe money generated in this scam was “passed on” as election funds to the Aam Aadmi Party. ED said that Arora received the bribe in cash and bank transactions after awarding the contract to NKG Infrastructure, and then he passed on this money to various persons related to DJB and also persons connected to AAP.
The agency said that the DJB contract was awarded at “highly inflated rates” so that the bribes could be collected from the contractors. Against the value of ₹38 crore, only around ₹17 crore was spent on the work, and the remaining amount was looted using various fake expenses.
The agency said in a statement that incriminating documents and digital evidence apart from valuables of ₹1.97 crore and foreign currency worth ₹4 lakh were seized during the raids conducted in this case. Persons raided in the case included Bibhav Kumar, personal assistant to Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, AAP Rajya Sabha MP N D Gupta, former DJB member Shalabh Kumar, chartered accountant Pankaj Mangal and others.
Delhi Excise Policy Case
The Central Bureau of Investigation’s First Information Report (FIR) which is the foundation of the case against the AAP supremo, claims several anomalies in the creation and execution of the Delhi excise policy (2021–2022). The policy was rescinded in response to accusations of corruption.
AAP leader Sanjay Singh and his aide Sarvesh Mishra are named in the ED’s sixth charge sheet which was submitted on 2nd December 2023. The ED maintained that the AAP used bribes totalling Rs 45 crore obtained via the policy as part of its campaign for the Goa assembly elections in 2022. Regarding Arvind Kejriwal’s involvement, one of the six charge sheets that were submitted in January 2023 asserted that he informed businessman Sameer Mahendru that Vijay Nair, the former AAP communications chief “is his boy” and that Mahendru ought to have faith in him.
The excise policy aimed to replace a sales-volume-based system with a license charge for dealers and revitalize the city’s failing liquor economy. It promised greater shopping experiences and swankier boutiques. The policy was the first to promote discounts and offers on booze purchases in Delhi. The policy was abandoned as a result of Lieutenant Governor Vinai Kumar Saxena’s decision to launch an investigation into purported anomalies in the regime.
(With inputs from ANI)
